“What took you so long, my dear?” Colonel Higgs asked. “Powdering your nose in the ladies’ loo?”
“You could use a little powder—and a little lipstick, too,” Colonel Shaw added. “?‘Beauty for Duty’—am I right, gentlemen?”
Maggie bit her tongue and passed out the agenda for the meeting, the title of which was “The Woman Problem”—about the alleged knotty conundrum of female SOE agents—then perched on a rickety wooden chair.
When SOE had been created by Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on July 22, 1940, Colonel Colin McVean Gubbins had first secured authority, albeit unofficially, to send women behind enemy lines. Colonel Gubbins saw no reason why women couldn’t do the job of secret agent as well as the men. Gubbins had met fierce opposition, but was ultimately supported by Prime Minister Churchill, who’d approved the deployment of women as SOE agents.
Colonel Gaskell, Gubbins’s successor at SOE, was far less enthusiastic about the “women situation.” Although SOE employed scores of women—as typists, drivers, and clerks—all were officially barred from armed combat, and there was no legal authority for servicewomen to carry out the kind of guerrilla work SOE desperately wanted them to perform. The 1929 Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, the main legal instruments offering protection to prisoners of war, made no provision for women—as they were never considered, in anyone’s wildest imagination, to be combatants.
And so, although all SOE agents, both male and female, were performing undercover missions, because of the Geneva Convention, women agents were at a higher risk. Men would be treated as prisoners of war. Women, on the other hand, had far less legal protection. They could be tortured for information and then executed as spies.
“We’re already using women in the field to great advantage,” Brody reminded Gaskell. “Nowadays, more and more Frenchmen are being sent to Russia and the East—and any able-bodied man left behind is looked on with suspicion. Whereas women can still travel freely—generally underestimated by the Nazis, you know.”
Gaskell looked to Maggie. “Would you be mother, my dear?”
Maggie poured the scalding, fragrant tea, passing out mugs to the men.
Gaskell blew noisily on the steaming liquid. “I’m still not in favor of sending our ladies abroad. And of course, if our use of girls as guerrillas leaks out, the policy will have to be denied.”
“Sorry I’m late—” came a woman’s high-pitched, warbling voice in a tone suggesting she was anything but sorry. Diana Lynd was the last to arrive for any meeting. Maggie was never sure if it was because she was legitimately busy or because she enjoyed making a grand entrance in a cloud of smoke and Jicky perfume. Miss Diana Lynd was a statuesque woman in her late thirties, with a quintessentially English sense of style—always dressed in impeccably tailored tweed suits in shades of brown and caramel and soft suede court shoes, her tawny hair rolled up at the nape of her neck. She had a distinctive accent—Benenden and Kensington, Maggie guessed, spoken in tones of cream and honey.
She’d informally been assigned not only responsibility for overseeing the women recruits but also the task of intelligence officer, which largely meant sifting through all information about life on the ground in France.
Gaskell stood, as did the other men. “Until we can shut down sending women agents to France, we can’t have this policy of using females get out,” Gaskell said, taking his seat once again. “If the Germans ever learn we’re using women to fight, we’d be an international disgrace.” He gave a nervous chortle.
“I believe,” Maggie said, raising one eyebrow, “that the welfare and safety of our women in the field—as well as their well-being after they return—should be our highest concern. Not what the Germans may or may not think.”
Brody cleared his throat. “I agree with you in principle, Maggie, but we cannot, under any circumstances, let the use of women as combatants become public knowledge—Goebbels would use it for the most horrific propaganda. If anything ever were to come to light, the policy of dropping women behind enemy lines would have to be denied.”
“The problem is,” Maggie interjected, pouring a mug of tea for Miss Lynd, “if the War Office won’t take official responsibility for our female agents, they can’t be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention—we’re allowing them to be tortured, raped, and killed with impunity.”
She handed the steaming mug to the older woman. “Also, if they die while serving their country, what are we going to tell their husbands, their children, the parents of these women when they don’t return? They’ll never know what their wives and mothers and daughters did for Britain.”
“Plenty of us labor in obscurity, Miss Hope,” intoned Miss Lynd as she accepted her tea, pursing moist, red-painted lips.
Maggie was undeterred. “And what of the female agents’ pensions?”
Gaskell startled. “Pensions?”
“Yes, pensions,” Maggie insisted. “Female operatives are already making only one-third the salary of the men—which I’ve said again and again is hardly fair, as we’re doing the same jobs and in the same danger. But what if they return and need disability?” She looked to Brody, who had the grace to redden.
“And what if they’re killed? What happens to their dependents?” Maggie cupped her numb hands around her own mug, using it for both warmth and strength. “The families of the male agents are well cared for—but what do the families of the women get? As of now—nothing.”
“The female agents have fathers and husbands to take care of them, of course,” reassured Colonel Shaw.
“No, sir, not all of them do. Only this morning I filed paperwork for Miss Audrey Thomas.” Maggie looked to Colonel Gaskell. “You may recall she’s part of F-Section’s Prosper network, in Paris. She was captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbrück. She’s divorced, with one child—who’s now in the care of an aunt, a retired schoolteacher, who’s also taking care of their mother.”
“Shouldn’t have gotten divorced then,” joked Colonel Higgs, lighting a cigarette.
“A little late for that bit of advice now, I think. What about her five-year-old daughter? What are we going to tell her? What sort of pension will she receive? The aunt is already taking care of the mother—how is she supposed to care for a child as well? If there were a pension in place, as the men have, it would be an invaluable help.”
Gaskell ran his hands through what was left of his hair. “Miss Lynd.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In addition to your other roles, I’m making you responsible for this”—he waved a hand—“female problem. Report back to me next week.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jolly good, Miss Lynd. Thank you. All right, we’re done here. Carry on!”
Once again, Maggie ground her teeth and left for her desk. It’s like bloody Sisyphus pushing the bloody boulder up the bloody mountain—only to have it slide right back, rolling over you on its way down just for good measure. No wonder Aunt Edith’s so bitter, she fumed. And has those deep frown lines between her eyebrows.
She caught Brody looking at her. “I’m fine.”
“It’s not you, it’s him,” he said, leaning on her desk. “You must realize he lost his mind during the Dunkirk evacuation. Shell shock, they call it—startles at loud noises and all that. I’ve seen your file, you know,” Brody continued softly. “You served bravely in Berlin. You’re a credit to England.”